Mikhail Kovalevsky
Mikhail Ivanovich Kovalevsky (Russian: Михаил Иванович Ковале́вский; September 15, 1919 - January 6, 2006) was a Soviet soldier and infantry officer who served throughout the Winter War, World War II, and the Cold War. Early life and family Kovalevsky was born on September 15, 1919, in the village of Makaryev in Russia. His parents were peasants, and, with the establishment of the Soviet Union, were placed under suspicion by the local government as possible enemies of the regime. His father, Ivan Aleksandrovich, was a farmer, and his mother, Anna Pyotrovna, was a schoolteacher. Kovalevsky spent most of his early life helping his father on the farm or his mother in the schoolhouse, and very rarely left the village. In 1937, facing no other prospects, he enlisted in the Red Army. Military service World War II Though Kovalevsky entered the army as an enlisted soldier, he found himself rapidly promoted. The great purges committed at Joseph Stalin's behest had sapped the Soviet officer corps of experienced soldiers. By 1939, he was made a junior lieutenant, and given command of an infantry platoon in the 1st Battalion, 16th Rifle Regiment, 87th Rifle Division. In September 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and the 87th Division was given its first assignment. They crossed into Polish territory on September 17, and began pushing rapidly towards Warsaw. Kovalevsky led his men, driving the Poles from their positions. During the Battle of Szack, the Soviet advance was temporarily checked, but the Poles were too few in number to do serious damage to the offensive. Junior Lieutenant Kovalevsky crossed the Bug River with his men and pushed the Polish forces back in the Battle of Wytyczno in October, and the campaign in Poland came to a successful conclusion not long after. In November 1939, the Winter War began, with the Soviet Union invading Finland. Junior Lieutenant Kovalevsky was sent to the front ahead of his regiment, where he was attached to the 1st Battalion, 7th Rifle Regiment of the 24th Rifle Division. The Finns engaged the Soviets in a series of ambushes and light skirmishes which severely damaged the Russian combat units. Kovalevsky was involved in the battles around the Karelian Isthmus, where the Soviets struggled to break the Finnish Mannerheim Line. In December, he took part in a failed attack on Finnish positions in the Battle of Summa. By the end of the year, the war was not going well for the Red Army, and a change of tactics was needed. In February 1940, an all-out assault was ordered on the Mannerheim Line. The Soviets smashed through the Finnish defenses, and Kovalevsky distinguished himself in defeating an enemy counterattack. Negotiations eventually brought the war to a successful end, and Kovalevsky was returned to his unit. For his actions in Finland, he was promoted to full Lieutenant. The 87th Division was stationed in Ukraine in the Kiev area from the end of the Finnish campaign. On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched a massive invasion along with its European allies in Operation Barbarossa. From the beginning, Lieutenant Kovalevsky and the Soviet troops fought hard against an overwhelming German force to prevent their encirclement. Kovalevsky himself led several breakout attempts but could not prevent the unit's entrapment, and the Russians were forced to retreat with very heavy losses. Pulling back, the 87th Division fought a bitter, month-long defensive campaign in the Battle of Kiev from August to September, and barely escaped annihilation through a successful breakout through German lines. By November, the division was reformed through a consolidation of several other severely depleted units. From December 1941 into January 1942, the division fought a series of defensive actions and counterattacks against the Germans in western Russia. On January 19, the 87th Rifle Division was redesignated the 13th Guards Rifle Division, and Kovalevsky's unit was now the 1st Battalion, 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment. The 13th Guards Division was now recognized as an elite formation and would be entrusted with very dangerous assignments until the end of the war. In May 1942, the division was selected to be a part of a significant Soviet counteroffensive, known as the Second Battle of Kharkov. After some successes against the Germans, Lieutenant Kovalevsky and his men were driven back and again threatened with encirclement. Nevertheless, the Soviet troops put up a stiff fight and blunted the German counterattacks, though they again suffered very severe losses in doing so. In the subsequent months, the division was pulled from the line and sent to the rear for a period of rest and refit. In mid 1942 the Germans and the other Axis nations were pushing south into the Caucasus. By September they had reached the vital city of Stalingrad on the Volga River. With the Germans closing in on the city, Lieutenant Kovalevsky and the 13th Division were thrust into its defense. The Battle of Stalingrad would last for months and would be the deadliest battle in modern history. Kovalevsky's men held out against all odds at key structures in the city, such as the railroad station, the Mamayev Kurgan, and the tractor factory. Vastly outnumbered, the Soviet soldiers withheld constant German assaults and slowly retook the city in counterattacks. From September 1942 until February 1943, the fighting was ferocious, and casualties were so high that the 13th Division practically ceased to exist. After decisive victory over the Germans was attained, the remnants of the division were pulled out of the line again. For his heroic part in the battle, Kovalevsky was promoted to Captain and awarded membership in the Communist Party. It would not be until July 1943 that Captain Kovalevsky and the division would see action again. When the Germans launched a massive attack at the Battle of Kursk, the division was sent into the line to prevent an enemy breakthrough. Holding back the German armored push known as Operation Citadel, Kovalevsky and his men ground down the German assaults for weeks until the enemy offensive was stopped permanently. Counterattacking in August, the division helped push the Germans off Russian soil and began the liberation of Ukraine. The 13th Guards Division played a major role in Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev, retaking Kharkov and Poltava in September. They crossed the Dnieper River and took the island of Peschanny in a hard-fought action against the Germans which laste until October. Kovalevsky's men assisted in the capture of Znamenka in December and continued to chase the Germans back through Ukraine throughout January and February 1944, taking part in the liberation of Kirovograd. From that direction, the division attacked again in March, crossing into Romanian territory and reaching the Dniester River by April. Fighting continued in Romania from May to June, after which the 13th Division was transferred to a different part of the front, set to take part in the drive on central Germany. From July 1944, the division smashed through into eastern Poland in an offensive concurrent with Operation Bagration. Captain Kovalevsky led his men in a rapid advance through central Poland and into eastern Germany, taking Breslau in January. In April 1945, with Nazi Germany on its last legs, the 13th Division took part in the Battle of Berlin, where they crossed the Teltow Canal and fought through the German capital city. After Berlin had fallen, Kovalevsky's men took part in the Battle of Halbe, where helped destroy the few remaining remnants of German forces in the area. Beginning in May 1945, the division's last assignment would be the assault into Czechoslovakia, with Prague as the target. The Soviet troops advanced south, fighting through the beleaguered Germans, until May 11, three days after the official German surrender to the Allies. Beginning of the Cold War Shortly after the end of the war, Kovalevsky was promoted to the rank of Major and was given a job in the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Germany. He undertook occupation duties in Berlin and around the country, holding various positions from 1945 until 1949 and 1953 to 1954. In 1950, he was alerted to the posibility of offensive action against the western powers during the Korean War, but nothing came of this. On March 9, 1953, Major Kovalevsky was a member of the honor guard for General Secretary Joseph Stalin's state funeral. Uprisings in East Germany and Hungary In June 1953, thousands of East Berliners revolted against the Soviet-sponsored government. Kovalevsky was involved in putting down the uprising, and coordinated arrests with the East German police. After 1954, he returned to Moscow. In October 1956, a similar but far more intense rebellion began in Budapest, the start of the Hungarian Revolution. Immediate action was taken by Soviet forces, and Kovalevsky was specifically requested to join the intervening force. He was hastily promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and given command of a battalion in the 319th Guards Motor Rifle Regiment of the 30th Guards Tank Division. After the revolutionaries had overwhelmed the small Hungarian and Soviet garrison, the Soviet Army began a much larger invasion on November 4. Lieutenant Colonel Kovalevsky's battalion retook control of Budapest from the rebels and continued pacifying operations in Hungary until January 1957, when Kovalevsky returned to Russia. Kovalevsky was in Berlin during the 1961 crisis and helped coordinate the security forces guarding construction of the Berlin Wall. Invasion of Czechoslovakia Beginning in 1968, the Socialist government of Czechoslovakia initiated many liberalizing reforms. The Soviet government took a belligerent stance to these changes, and attempted to dissuade the Czechoslovak reformers. When this did not work, military action was seen as the only alternative. Kovalevsky, recently promoted to Colonel, was to take part in this action, though not in a direct capacity. On August 20, the Soviet Army and other Warsaw Pact-aligned militaries invaded Czechoslovakia. Colonel Kovalevsky was holding a staff position in the army which carried out the invasion, and stayed in Prague for a month to report its effects. End of service On June 11, 1970, Mikhail Ivanovich Kovalevsky retired from the Soviet Army. He had been a hero of the Great Patriotic War, wounded several times in action and decorated accordingly. He had a small ceremony in his honor in Moscow before he left the service. Personal life Kovalevsky married Ekaterina Konstantinovna Bergmann on February 17, 1949. The two had met during the war when Ekaterina had been a nurse with the Red Army. They lived in Filyovsky Park in Moscow from 1949 until 1997, when Ekaterina passed away. Mikhail Kovalevsky subsequently returned to his home village of Makaryev, where he died on January 6, 2006. As per his wishes, he was buried on the west bank of the Volga River, where he had fought 64 years prior. Mikhail and Ekaterina had four children: Philip Mikhailovich, Anna Mikhailovna, Dimitry Mihkailovich, and Tatyana Mikhailovna. Views Kovalevsky was a committed supporter of Joseph Stalin until the leader's death, and even initially resisted Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization reforms. During the Cold War, he advocated belligerent policies against the West and was a strong supporter of the military alliance of the Warsaw Pact. In 1991, the aging Kovalevsky surprised many by arguing against the August military coup, stating that it would "only lead Russia to ruin". He eventually abandoned his strong belief in Communism. Rather paradoxically, Kovalevsky was also a practicing member of the Russian Orthodox Church, though these beliefs waxed and waned in his adult life. He supported Stalin's relegitimization of the church and resented Khrushchev's renewed persecution. Equipment For the major battles on the Eastern Front during the war, Kovalevsky used to great effect the Mosin-Nagant M1891/30 bolt-action rifle along with its spike bayonet. For a brief period, he was also given the opportunity to test the experimental Dyakonov rifle grenade adaptor. He used the ubiquitous Tokarev TT-33 pistol as his sidearm and carried the RGD-33 fragmentation grenade and the RGD-1 smoke grenade. Later in the Cold War, he used the Simonov SKS semi-automatic rifle with its folding knife bayonet and replaced his Tokarev with the Makarov PM. He also carried the newer RGD-5 fragmentation grenade during this period. Kovalevsky also took a copy of the new AKM assault rifle with him to Budapest during the uprising. Category:Soldiers in World War II Category:Soldiers in the Winter War Category:Soldiers in the Hungarian Revolution Category:Soldiers in the Invasion of Czechoslovakia Category:Soviet soldiers Category:Russian soldiers